Wam's World

Ebay-sive Action

A couple of days ago after establishing a "base of operations" (Joceyln's brother Jeff in California), I starting bidding on items on Ebay. Like the first time I experienced ordering comics online, a small twinge of excitement came over me. This feeling had to be coupled with self-control as I wished to avoid going overboard. Cheap or not, I'm still paying with dollars that I technically don't have as it still has to be converted into pesos when the bill comes. And there's the risk of making what I call purchasing mistakes: stuff that looked cooler in the "catalogue" that it did in real life (i.e. Superman hardcovers, B&W indy comics and other things I regretted buying in the end).

It wasn't that easy setting up. For a while I considered acquiring the services of Johnny Air Cargo, with it's (what I thought was) enticing price of $9/lbs. per shipment. Turns out that price excludes other freight charges, which totaled $20 minimum. Suffice to say that would wipe out any cash I sought to save, not to mention defeat the purpose on shopping online. I opted for looking for a kind sucke...uh, soul who'd let me use his/her address in the US to drop the stuff at. And of course there's my relatives in Canada, as well. After registering at Paypal I was (almost) ready. (As of this blog entry I'm still 4 membership numbers short of completing my registration, no thanks to Paypal for taking so freaking long to send it to me.)

As with real auctions there's the matter of being outbid. Orange on Ebay is quickly becoming my least favorite color as it's always that dreaded orange text that tells me I've been OUTBID BY ANOTHER BIDDER. Personally I couldn't believe that someone else online wants that copy of Going Simpsonic with the Simpsons CD as badly as I do. Why I Hate Saturn was giving me trouble too. Not surprising, though, considering that it's currently out of print.

My real goal? Getting good quality DVDs cheap. Ironically from all the stuff I'm currently bidding on not a single DVD is among them. Hey, with all the piracy that's going on I've yet to establish what constitutes as "cheap," particularly for the complete 1st and 2nd season set of Sopranos DVDs.

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Just finished watching the premiere episode of Project Greenlight on Cinemax. Cool stuff so far, in an I-was-a-film-student-so-I-can-relate sort of way. I do not envy these guys' (and girl, the co-president of production on Miramax, which made her the biggest kahuna of the bunch) job of having to pick out 10, then 3 then 1 screenplay from literally thousands of entries. I already knew who won but it was still fascinating to watch the process, particularly because it was like my screenplay thesis all over again. Same wrecked nerves, same deconstruction and intense scrutinizing of the screenplay in front of the finalists, same hey-it-sounded-cool-at-first-but-in-the-end-it-wasn't-actually-that-great ideas and vice versa. Brian Bendis was right on one thing: this is all a crapshoot. The right script and the right time get you the job. So that simultaneous feeling of envy and contempt (like I feel for Tim Yap) is around a lot for winner Pete Jones. His screenplay (from what I can tell) would probably mesh well as a Hallmark movie, but it was his zeal (and necessary arrogance mixed with enthusiasm), coupled with his felt-scripted-but-was-probably-the-editing speech to the panel at the end that got him the job.

Rachelle doesn't get Cinemax. I should tape this for her.